Meetings, it's time to crack the nut!
Ok, I never cracked this one in Corporate life, too many meetings, back to backs and never get time to return phone calls or do your emails in work hours so nights, early mornings and week-ends became the norm.
For people that know me I tend to work long hours, I want to do a good job and that normally meant working longer hours during the week and on the week-end.
However, one of the things that impacted my hours was meeting. There were so many meetings that I really didn’t get work done during the day, much. Sounds stupid, however it’s more common than you think. You spend so many hours of each day in meetings, the ability to deal with fires, and get some real work done became too hard.
I also became the person that created the meetings, and the more meetings I added because I want to get the work done or speak with someone in a meeting was required. This got worse during COVID, video calls for something that was a 5 min chat, no one speaks on the mobile anymore it’s video calls all round and something that should be 10 mins is now min 30 minutes, and people feel like they need to fill the time. It’s stupid.
I also became the person that created the meetings, and the more meetings I added because I want to get the work done or speak with someone in a meeting was required. This got worse during COVID, video calls for something that was a 5 min chat, no one speaks on the mobile anymore it’s video calls all round and something that should be 10 mins is now min 30 minutes, and people feel like they need to fill the time. It’s stupid.
Some companies are better than others, but it’s a problem that needs to be solved. It will make a material difference to a number of really important factors and therefore it’s the nut to crack, for 2023.
I had some thoughts on how to improve this – and I tried to implement a range of tactics, but I failed, I am pretty sure I failed because I never did crack the meeting nut. If a company can crack this nut, and give each person back 50% of their time for work, then the productivity impact would be enormous.
So I’ve decided that this is my nut to crack this year, 2023.
I am going to interview people or get them to produce videos to share there ideas or thoughts around reducing meetings in organisations. I am going to find a number of organisations that want to make the change, and we start by rolling out a plan of attack and measure the success.
Before we start this adventure it’s important to be clear on the problem we are trying to solve.
Problem to solve: There are too many meetings in the diary, it makes it difficult for employees to get their work done.
How widespread is the issue: At the beginning I thought the issue was more leadership, in meetings with other leaders and their team and because majority if their job leading people that was ok, but now it’s across the board and therefore people who have a day job, outside of meetings are in meetings all day. It’s really widespread.
Our focus: we will focus in on Corporates, not consulting firms etc but Corporates.
What is the problem:
• Employees haven’t got time to their work.
• Work output/productivity is impacted.
• Many meetings not well planned (agenda) or documented and therefore become a talk fest.
• Meetings become people’s whole day.
• With the war on talent, utilising your people to deliver a result, is critical to ensure their role is fulfilling.
• It’s a waste of time, energy.
• Ever heard of zoom fatigue.
Hypothesis – to be validated:
• This is a problem that go across many organisations, however maybe worse in larger organisations.
• It’s driven from the CEO, Executive Leadership team – if they meet a lot, they can also then create a lot of meetings and it flows down.
• It’s not clear what is a meeting versus an email or phone call.
• Leaders and managers are impacted more than employees.
• Having an EA doesn’t necessarily help, as they see a gap and put in a meeting. Calendly and other similar apps are a good idea but may mean you lose control of your diary and don’t get a say on who is in your calendar.
What I have seen implemented in organisations:
• Meeting free day – once a month.
✔️ If it’s done companywide it works better than a division, especially if the division is corporate area (e.g. finance).
✔️ I have seen companies do customer day on that day, and people are encouraged to get on the phones, or go on a ride along with sales reps to meet customers.
✔️ While it was a good idea, it’s hard to enforce company wide and it doesn’t fix the other days of the month.
• Shorten meetings to 25 mins and 50 minutes rather than 30 minutes or 1 hour to give people a break between meetings. I think it’s a good idea and you can use teams to have this as default, but it doesn’t get rid of the meetings.
• I have seen organisations work on limiting the number of people attending meetings, so only the people who need to attend the meeting attend and if more than X number need to cull.
• Meetings need to be in the mornings or afternoons, but again without a companywide change it’s hard to manage. But the idea is good as it allows people meeting time and then work time, and gives people a big chunk of time to get work done.
I did see on Linkedin over the break, that a number of companies have said no more meetings, over 2 people. There was a lot of positive response to these companies, however not sure that this is sustainable.
Measuring success:
• Improved employee satisfaction
• Improved employee productivity
• Reduced turnover
• Reduced overtime from employees
We will assess along the journey, the ways to measure success.
It’s the start the journey, we want to understand the problem, and validate the hypothesis, work with a range of people to determine some strategies to resolve the issue, trial these out in a number of organisations and assess what works and what doesn’t.
During this journey we will keep you informed of our progress, as every company and leader could drive a significant improvement in the way they operate and the outcome on their people/teams.
If you are interested in following along or being involved in the social experiment, please reach out….
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